And so it is in matters of religion. If you are in harmony with any thought there will come the echo in your heart's strings, and you will know that it is true. But if you are not in harmony, then no matter how loudly the evidence be sounded there will be no echo there. All these ideas on which religions are built are instincts. They are of the heart, never of the head. Reason affects them not at all. These instincts are not the same with all. They vary, and so the religions that are based on them vary. They have nothing to do with reason, and therefore those of one religion cannot understand another. And they are not fixed; for the belief in the Unity of God only evolved, after many thousands of years, quite recently, and the belief in ghosts, universal among earlier people and now among the half-civilized, lingers with us only as a subject for amusement. There is no "evidence" in religion; you either believe or you don't. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE AFTER DEATH. It is two years and a half ago now that I passed through Westminster Hall, one of a great multitude. They went in double file, thickly packed between barriers of rails on either side the hall, and between where everyone looked there lay--what? A plain oak coffin on a table. Within this coffin there lay the body of Mr. Gladstone, he who in his day had filled the public eye in England more than any other man. His body lay there in state, and the people came to see. Emerging into the street beyond and seeing the ceaseless stream of people that flowed past, I wondered to myself. These people are Christians. If you ask them where Mr. Gladstone is now, they will, if they reply hurriedly, answer, "He is dead and in there"; but if they pause to reflect they will say, "He is in heaven. His soul is with God." If, then, his soul, if _he_ be with God, what are you come to see? Shortly there will be a funeral, and what will it be called? The funeral of Mr. Gladstone. But Mr. Gladstone is in heaven, not here. Surely this is strange. * * * * * "If there is anything I can do for you be sure you tell me, for your husband was my great friend." So wrote the man. And to him came her reply: "Sometimes when you are near go and see his grave where he sleeps in that far land, and put a flower upon it for your remembrance and for mine." But if he, too, be in heaven and not there at all? If it be, as the Burmans say, but the empty shell that lies there? Why should we visit graves if the soul be indeed separate from the body? If he be far away in happiness, why go to his grave? To remember but the corruption that lies beneath? Men use words and phrases remembering what they ought to believe. For very few are sincere and know what really they do believe. You cannot tell from their professions, only from their unconscious words and their acts.